Chapter6

It was not until late that afternoon that Darrow could claim his
postponed hour with Anna. When at last he found her alone in her
sitting-room it was with a sense of liberation so great that he
sought no logical justification of it. He simply felt that all
their destinies were in Miss Painter's grasp, and that, resistance
being useless, he could only enjoy the sweets of surrender.

Anna herself seemed as happy, and for more explicable reasons.
She had assisted, after luncheon, at another debate between Madame
de Chantelle and her confidant, and had surmised, when she withdrew
from it, that victory was permanently perched on Miss Painter's
banners.

"I don't know how she does it, unless it's by the dead weight of
her convictions. She detests the French so that she'd back up Owen
even if she knew nothing—or knew too much—of Miss Viner. She
somehow regards the match as a protest against the corruption of
European morals. I told Owen that was his great chance, and he's
made the most of it."

"What a tactician you are! You make me feel that I hardly know
the rudiments of diplomacy," Darrow smiled at her, abandoning
himself to a perilous sense of well-being.

She gave him back his smile. "I'm afraid I think nothing short
of my own happiness is worth wasting any diplomacy on!"

"That's why I mean to resign from the service of my country," he
rejoined with a laugh of deep content.

The feeling that both resistance and apprehension were vain was
working like wine in his veins. He had done what he could to
deflect the course of events: now he could only stand aside and
take his chance of safety. Underneath this fatalistic feeling was
the deep sense of relief that he had, after all, said and done
nothing that could in the least degree affect the welfare of Sophy
Viner. That fact took a millstone off his neck.

Meanwhile he gave himself up once more to the joy of Anna's
presence. They had not been alone together for two long days, and
he had the lover's sense that he had forgotten, or at least
underestimated, the strength of the spell she cast. Once more her
eyes and her smile seemed to bound his world. He felt that their
light would always move with him as the sunset moves before a ship
at sea.

The next day his sense of security was increased by a decisive
incident. It became known to the expectant household that Madame de
Chantelle had yielded to the tremendous impact of Miss Painter's
determination and that Sophy Viner had been "sent for" to the
purple satin sitting- room.

At luncheon, Owen's radiant countenance proclaimed the happy
sequel, and Darrow, when the party had moved back to the oak-room
for coffee, deemed it discreet to wander out alone to the terrace
with his cigar. The conclusion of Owen's romance brought his own
plans once more to the front. Anna had promised that she would
consider dates and settle details as soon as Madame de Chantelle
and her grandson had been reconciled, and Darrow was eager to go
into the question at once, since it was necessary that the
preparations for his marriage should go forward as rapidly as
possible. Anna, he knew, would not seek any farther pretext for
delay; and he strolled up and down contentedly in the sunshine,
certain that she would come out and reassure him as soon as the
reunited family had claimed its due share of her attention.

But when she finally joined him her first word was for the
younger lovers.

"I want to thank you for what you've done for Owen," she began,
with her happiest smile.

"Who—I?" he laughed. "Are you confusing me with Miss
Painter?"

"Perhaps I ought to say for ME," she corrected herself. "You've
been even more of a help to us than Adelaide."

"My dear child! What on earth have I done?"

"You've managed to hide from Madame de Chantelle that you don't
really like poor Sophy."

Darrow felt the pallour in his cheek. "Not like her? What put
such an idea into your head?"

"Oh, it's more than an idea—it's a feeling. But what difference
does it make, after all? You saw her in such a different setting
that it's natural you should be a little doubtful. But when you
know her better I'm sure you'll feel about her as I do."

"It's going to be hard for me not to feel about everything as
you do."

"Well, then—please begin with my daughter-in-law!"

He gave her back in the same tone of banter: "Agreed: if you ll
agree to feel as I do about the pressing necessity of our getting
married."

"I want to talk to you about that too. You don't know what a
weight is off my mind! With Sophy here for good, I shall feel so
differently about leaving Effie. I've seen much more accomplished
governesses—to my cost!—but I've never seen a young thing more gay
and kind and human. You must have noticed, though you've seen them
so little together, how Effie expands when she's with her. And
that, you know, is what I want. Madame de Chantelle will provide
the necessary restraint." She clasped her hands on his arm. "Yes,
I'm ready to go with you now. But first of all—this very
moment!—you must come with me to Effie. She knows, of course,
nothing of what's been happening; and I want her to be told first
about YOU."

Effie, sought throughout the house, was presently traced to the
school-room, and thither Darrow mounted with Anna. He had never
seen her so alight with happiness, and he had caught her buoyancy
of mood. He kept repeating to himself: "It's over—it's over," as if
some monstrous midnight hallucination had been routed by the return
of day.

As they approached the school-room door the terrier's barks came
to them through laughing remonstrances.

"She's giving him his dinner," Anna whispered, her hand in
Darrow's.

"Don't forget the gold-fish!" they heard another voice call
out.

Darrow halted on the threshold. "Oh—not now!"

"Not now?"

"I mean—she'd rather have you tell her first. I'll wait for you
both downstairs."

He was aware that she glanced at him intently. "As you please.
I'll bring her down at once."

She opened the door, and as she went in he heard her say: "No,
Sophy, don't go! I want you both."

The rest of Darrow's day was a succession of empty and agitating
scenes. On his way down to Givre, before he had seen Effie Leath,
he had pictured somewhat sentimentally the joy of the moment when
he should take her in his arms and receive her first filial kiss.
Everything in him that egotistically craved for rest, stability, a
comfortably organized middle-age, all the home-building instincts
of the man who has sufficiently wooed and wandered, combined to
throw a charm about the figure of the child who might—who
should—have been his. Effie came to him trailing the cloud of glory
of his first romance, giving him back the magic hour he had missed
and mourned. And how different the realization of his dream had
been! The child's radiant welcome, her unquestioning acceptance of,
this new figure in the family group, had been all that he had hoped
and fancied. If Mother was so awfully happy about it, and Owen and
Granny, too, how nice and cosy and comfortable it was going to be
for all of them, her beaming look seemed to say; and then,
suddenly, the small pink fingers he had been kissing were laid on
the one flaw in the circle, on the one point which must be settled
before Effie could, with complete unqualified assurance, admit the
new-comer to full equality with the other gods of her Olympus.

"And is Sophy awfully happy about it too?" she had asked,
loosening her hold on Darrow's neck to tilt back her head and
include her mother in her questioning look.

"Why, dearest, didn't you see she was?" Anna had exclaimed,
leaning to the group with radiant eyes.

"I think I should like to ask her," the child rejoined, after a
minute's shy consideration; and as Darrow set her down her mother
laughed: "Do, darling, do! Run off at once, and tell her we expect
her to be awfully happy too."

The scene had been succeeded by others less poignant but almost
as trying. Darrow cursed his luck in having, at such a moment, to
run the gauntlet of a houseful of interested observers. The state
of being "engaged", in itself an absurd enough predicament, even to
a man only intermittently exposed, became intolerable under the
continuous scrutiny of a small circle quivering with participation.
Darrow was furthermore aware that, though the case of the other
couple ought to have made his own less conspicuous, it was rather
they who found a refuge in the shadow of his prominence. Madame de
Chantelle, though she had consented to Owen's engagement and
formally welcomed his betrothed, was nevertheless not sorry to
show, by her reception of Darrow, of what finely-shaded degrees of
cordiality she was capable. Miss Painter, having won the day for
Owen, was also free to turn her attention to the newer candidate
for her sympathy; and Darrow and Anna found themselves immersed in
a warm bath of sentimental curiosity.

It was a relief to Darrow that he was under a positive
obligation to end his visit within the next forty-eight hours. When
he left London, his Ambassador had accorded him a ten days' leave.
His fate being definitely settled and openly published he had no
reason for asking to have the time prolonged, and when it was over
he was to return to his post till the time fixed for taking up his
new duties. Anna and he had therefore decided to be married, in
Paris, a day or two before the departure of the steamer which was
to take them to South America; and Anna, shortly after his return
to England, was to go up to Paris and begin her own
preparations.

In honour of the double betrothal Effie and Miss Viner were to
appear that evening at dinner; and Darrow, on leaving his room, met
the little girl springing down the stairs, her white ruffles and
coral-coloured bows making her look like a daisy with her yellow
hair for its centre. Sophy Viner was behind her pupil, and as she
came into the light Darrow noticed a change in her appearance and
wondered vaguely why she looked suddenly younger, more vivid, more
like the little luminous ghost of his Paris memories. Then it
occurred to him that it was the first time she had appeared at
dinner since his arrival at Givre, and the first time,
consequently, that he had seen her in evening dress. She was still
at the age when the least adornment embellishes; and no doubt the
mere uncovering of her young throat and neck had given her back her
former brightness. But a second glance showed a more precise reason
for his impression. Vaguely though he retained such details, he
felt sure she was wearing the dress he had seen her in every
evening in Paris. It was a simple enough dress, black, and
transparent on the arms and shoulders, and he would probably not
have recognized it if she had not called his attention to it in
Paris by confessing that she hadn't any other. "The same dress?
That proves that she's forgotten!" was his first half-ironic
thought; but the next moment, with a pang of compunction, he said
to himself that she had probably put it on for the same reason as
before: simply because she hadn't any other.

He looked at her in silence, and for an instant, above Effie's
bobbing head, she gave him back his look in a full bright gaze.

"Oh, there's Owen!" Effie cried, and whirled away down the
gallery to the door from which her step-brother was emerging. As
Owen bent to catch her, Sophy Viner turned abruptly back to
Darrow.

"You, too?" she said with a quick laugh. "I didn't know—— " And
as Owen came up to them she added, in a tone that might have been
meant to reach his ear: "I wish you all the luck that we can
spare!"

About the dinner-table, which Effie, with Miss Viner's aid, had
lavishly garlanded, the little party had an air of somewhat
self-conscious festivity. In spite of flowers, champagne and a
unanimous attempt at ease, there were frequent lapses in the talk,
and moments of nervous groping for new subjects. Miss Painter alone
seemed not only unaffected by the general perturbation but as
tightly sealed up in her unconsciousness of it as a diver in his
bell. To Darrow's strained attention even Owen's gusts of gaiety
seemed to betray an inward sense of insecurity. After dinner,
however, at the piano, he broke into a mood of extravagant hilarity
and flooded the room with the splash and ripple of his music.

Darrow, sunk in a sofa corner in the lee of Miss Painter's
granite bulk, smoked and listened in silence, his eyes moving from
one figure to another. Madame de Chantelle, in her armchair near
the fire, clasped her little granddaughter to her with the gesture
of a drawing-room Niobe, and Anna, seated near them, had fallen
into one of the attitudes of vivid calm which seemed to Darrow to
express her inmost quality. Sophy Viner, after moving uncertainly
about the room, had placed herself beyond Mrs. Leath, in a chair
near the piano, where she sat with head thrown back and eyes
attached to the musician, in the same rapt fixity of attention with
which she had followed the players at the Francais. The accident of
her having fallen into the same attitude, and of her wearing the
same dress, gave Darrow, as he watched her, a strange sense of
double consciousness. To escape from it, his glance turned back to
Anna; but from the point at which he was placed his eyes could not
take in the one face without the other, and that renewed the
disturbing duality of the impression. Suddenly Owen broke off with
a crash of chords and jumped to his feet.

"What's the use of this, with such a moon to say it for us?"

Behind the uncurtained window a low golden orb hung like a ripe
fruit against the glass.

"Yes—let's go out and listen," Anna answered. Owen threw open
the window, and with his gesture a fold of the heavy star-sprinkled
sky seemed to droop into the room like a drawn-in curtain. The air
that entered with it had a frosty edge, and Anna bade Effie run to
the hall for wraps.

Darrow said: "You must have one too," and started toward the
door; but Sophy, following her pupil, cried back: "We'll bring
things for everybody."

Owen had followed her, and in a moment the three reappeared, and
the party went out on the terrace. The deep blue purity of the
night was unveiled by mist, and the moonlight rimmed the edges of
the trees with a silver blur and blanched to unnatural whiteness
the statues against their walls of shade.

Darrow and Anna, with Effie between them, strolled to the
farther corner of the terrace. Below them, between the fringes of
the park, the lawn sloped dimly to the fields above the river. For
a few minutes they stood silently side by side, touched to peace
beneath the trembling beauty of the sky. When they turned back,
Darrow saw that Owen and Sophy Viner, who had gone down the steps
to the garden, were also walking in the direction of the house. As
they advanced, Sophy paused in a patch of moonlight, between the
sharp shadows of the yews, and Darrow noticed that she had thrown
over her shoulders a long cloak of some light colour, which
suddenly evoked her image as she had entered the restaurant at his
side on the night of their first dinner in Paris. A moment later
they were all together again on the terrace, and when they
re-entered the drawing-room the older ladies were on their way to
bed.

Effie, emboldened by the privileges of the evening, was for
coaxing Owen to round it off with a game of forfeits or some such
reckless climax; but Sophy, resuming her professional role, sounded
the summons to bed. In her pupil's wake she made her round of
good-nights; but when she proffered her hand to Anna, the latter
ignoring the gesture held out both arms.

"Good-night, dear child," she said impulsively, and drew the
girl to her kiss.